Half-Life 2 held hostage?

Court filings show VU Games has the right to sit on finished Half-Life 2 code for up to six months. Could it be deja vu all over again?

As part of GameSpot's ongoing look into the two-year-old copyright infringement case that pits business partners Valve Inc. and Vivendi Universal Games against each other in US District Court, additional documents uncovered this week reveal an interesting ace up VUG's sleeve. In court filings dated August 27, 2004, VU Games' senior vice president and deputy general counsel Eric Roeder entered the following statement into the record.

"Valve has announced that it will deliver a release candidate version of Half-Life 2 (HL2) (a game required under the 2001 SPA) to Sierra/VUG within the next few weeks. If Valve delivers a release candidate version that complies with the contract and is a Final Milestone, then VUG will have six months to release the product under the 2001 SPA. Valve is pressing VUG to release the product early within that six month window, and its representatives have made a number of public statements without our consent or concurrence that the product will be published and released to the general public in September of this year."

News source: GameSpot